Statelessness

FMR 32

April 2009

A stateless person is someone who is not recognised as a national by any state. They therefore have no nationality or citizenship and are unprotected by national legislation, leaving them vulnerable in ways that most of us never have to consider. This latest issue of FMR includes 22 articlesby academic, international and local actors debating the challenges faced by stateless people and the search for appropriate responses and solutions.

The issue also includes 17 articles on other aspects of forced migration, among which are a mini-feature (comprising four articles) on refugee status determination and articles on European migration policies, Colombia, Ecuador, disaster IDPs, Europe-Africa cooperation, trafficking in Iran, cash grants for refugees and reproductive health care in emergencies.

Printed copies of FMR are all free. If you would like to receive one or more hard copies for your organisation, or multiple copies for distribution to partners and policy/decision-makers or for use at conferences/workshops, please contact the Editors at fmr@qeh.ox.ac.uk. We will need your full postal address and details about how many copies (in which language/s) you require.

Please note that this issue of FMR will be distributed to our usual mailing list; if you usually receive FMR, you do not need to request this issue unless you require multiple copies.

We would like to thank the following who have provided funding specifically for this issue: the US Department of State, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM); the Open Society Justice Initiative; the European Union; the Statelessness Unit of UNHCR’s Division of International Protection Services; and UNHCR’s Africa Bureau.

You may also be interested in the Refugee Studies Centre Policy Briefing Statelessness, protection and equality. This policy brief provides a context and typology of stateless people, before examining the international law and jurisprudence as well as human rights discourse and policy that concern them.

StatelessnessFMR 32April 2009

Contents

From the editors

Feature: Statelessness

Statelessness: what it is and why it matters
Indira Goris, Julia Harrington and Sebastian Köhn